Review: Yoot Tower
Product Information
Published by: SEGA
Web: http://www.yoottower.com
Street Price: $35
System Requirements
PowerMac with Mac OS 7.5 or greater
32 MB of RAM, 100 MB free hard disk space
As we had purchased Sim Tower a month before, I anxiously awaited receiving Yoot Tower, the pulse pounding sequel. Ok, it's an upgrade, but I'm the Hollywood Guy, so what the heck. I received the software via express delivery, and it even included a nifty t-shirt, with their logo and slogan, "You build it. You deal with it." So, I put on the t-shirt, loaded up the software, and went to work.
For those of you not familiar with Sim Tower, let me walk you through this game from the beginning. Yoot Tower offers three different scenarios: Hawaii, Kegon Falls, and Tokyo. All have their advantages and disadvantages. I chose Hawaii, because, well, who wouldn't wanna own a luxury tower in Hawaii?
If you've played any of the SIM line of games, you know what's next. You get a basic layout, on which to build. In this case, the first thing you have to put down, is a lobby for your tower. Add an elevator, followed by a couple of floors, and you're set. Now, the fun really begins, as you choose what to put on each floor. I've put up a couple of condos, two coffee shops, and an ice cream parlor. I've also added a restroom facility. These guys thought of everything! This isn't a very good design, as the game seems to want you to put like developments on the same floor. I think I did pretty good to start out, as I'm merely trying to illustrate the game on a 14" screen.
Later, as it grows, you get more options. You arrange for security, to deal with the occasional bomb threat, housekeeping staff, and garbage detail. All these things cost money, so, you'll need to attract tenants, with office space, movie theatres, malls, and more shops. Also, a good four star restaurant wouldn't hurt. Make sure you put in a freight elevator. The new feature of this game that my wife really liked was the ability to build multiple towers, and you can even put a skyway between them!
Well, the object of this game, is to build until you get to put the specialty item on top of your tower, while keeping down your tenant's stress levels. For Hawaii, it's a Cathedral. And even then, you're not done. The "finished product," looks like this:
However, this still isn't a four star building. Some problems that I noticed, the maintenance fee seems a bit high. Just as you're about to earn enough money to buy something, the maintenance fee kicks in, and you have to start saving all over again. This gets frustrating after awhile, but I think this happened because I built too fast.
You can earn extra income buy selling billboard space. Also, keep a constant eye on the feature playing in your movie theatre. They don't change automatically, and the moviegoers stop showing up after about a month. So, you've got a money pit on your hands.
All of the above aside, I liked Yoot Tower. I mean, where else can you be a building owner, hotel manager, and movie theatre owner all in one?
Copyright © 1999 Mike Shields, mshields@atpm.com. Reviewing in ATPM is open to anyone. If you're interested, write to us at reviews@atpm.com.
Reader Comments (108)
I can think of two options. Either locate someone who has purchased it and try it on their computer, or stop by an Apple Store and (assuming they carry it) ask if they'd be willing to install it on one of their machines to let you try it. I wouldn't be surprised if they declined, but we always hear how shopping in the Apple Store is supposed to be the best computer store experience you'll ever have. Getting them to let you try this software would go a long way towards fufulling that experience for you!
Good luck, and thanks for reading.
Thanks.
I truly haven't played this game in a while. I suggest you perform a Yahoo search and see if there are any web sites or user groups dedicated to this game. Maybe a search of Deja.com which archives all the usenet postings would be a good place to try.
Thank you for reading ATPM.
You also have to understand that copyrights, if unchecked, are good for something like 50 years (I'm not certain on that number, but it's certainly more than the four years that is this game's age). Therefore, it's logical to conclude that, presently and technically, there is absolutely no such thing as abandonware.
Having said that, ATPM.com won't permit any comments on the site that reference how to obtain "abandonware."
So how does one obtain a legal copy? Well, are you sure you searched the web really hard? I just Googled the keywords "yoot tower mac" and came up with several hits. The first one was (--I have removed this link because sometime in the past year, the domain got taken over by a pr0n site--) The "buy" link resulted in a screen that reads, "To place your order for Yoot's Tower, please contact Service Concepts, International at 1-888-271-5678."
About 10 Amazon.com vendors are also selling it. Just search for "Yoot" on Amazon.
Incidentally, there have been some comments (which we've had to remove) stating that since Yoot Tower was no longer developed in any way, it can be obtained from certain abandonware sites. While you may be able to find such a site, it's still not legal. There is no such thing as abandonware—at least not yet. The minimum term of a copyright is 70 years plus the life of the author. Consequently, offering software in a manner not sanctioned by the developer is illegal, even if the developer is not actively distributing it. Unfortunately, if the software can't be bought anywhere and you can't find someone who is selling their used copy, you're pretty much out of luck. Period.
Please note that future comments that reveal or request ways to obtain this or any other piece of software from illegal sources will continue to be removed from this site.
But i ve got a problem........how come all offices "near" to the lift chao-ing for excessive noise....how far should i put those elevators away from them.....
How true is that?
Also, hearing all this about Yoot Tower, I will have to go check it out.
floors with a fast food and shops floor have stairs go from that floor to the offices, and have your elevators stop on only the fast food floors, thus evenly distributed trafic and alot of cash from all of the fast food places and shops. Although I have faild to test this as of late, let me know if it works! =)
www.yoottower.com dosn't work anymore,
can comeone help me???
Web sites aren't permanent universal constants. They actually do sometimes close up.
Where can I find information about the structures and what's required to gain stars etc.
-Johanna
http://www.autobahn.mb.ca/~pmclure/SimTower.html
Hope this helps anyone having trouble starting a new tower ;D (Also theres a download of the handy "Rent Wizard" used to change those anyoning rent changes on Sim Tower). Happy Building Lol.
Thanks
and to answer the forthcoming questions, no, i don't know of a development kit, no i haven't found any plugins, no i don't know exactly how to make new ones, but yes, i do have an idea of how to do it that will work (i just don't know how well it'll work, and i don't want to do it alone)...
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Hi, everyone. I played Sim Tower many years ago, borrowed it from a friend then stopped when I gave it back. I thought about it half-heartedly every now and then over the years.
I was curious this year and looked around and found out about Yoot Tower. I paid too much (about $30) on Amazon, but what the heck. It was a Christmas gift "from myself".
Anyway, I have been playing it like crazy, spending ten hours one day/night. I've finally slowed down a bit, and am methodically working on a big tower in Tokyo. I've not played Kegon or Hawaii yet. I do OK, and really want to build a nice tower.
I did a big, long, multi-hour Google search tonight. There is not much info, just much repeated. Then I found this site. It's good to see some live activity on the game. I hope to learn something here.
I can help with a few questions I've seen here, but not too many tonight (fried mind).
First of all, how to get the CD. I agree that the abandonware idea is pretty nasty. I hadn't heard the term until I started to look for Yoot Tower. Shocking concept. So, as I was looking around tonight, I found a site, http://www.cdromhouse.com/products/segatower.html, seling it for $8.50. I don't know if this is a legitimate site. They call it Sega Tower, but it is clearly Yoot Tower as shown in the picture. I have to think that there must be a lot of copies available, as the game is so old.
At any rate, another good reason to buy a legit copy is the manual. You really can't be effective in the game without it. The manual is a bit frustrating, given its incompleteness and sometimes poor English, but it is really essential. You can learn a lot from the game itself, of course, but you need the manual to sort of complete the picture.
Someone asked about the subway. Like any other object in the game, it can't go beyont the edges of the lobby, or for that matter any of the floors above. Since it's in the basement, that's a little counterintuitive, but that matches the rules above ground: You can't make a floor "hang out" above the one below. So, for example, you could never build an inverted pyramid.
Cheat codes: The only one published is the one listed above, Ctrl-Alt-Shift-D. People say it gives you money, and yes it does. But what it really does is gets you into debug mode. You will notice that a Debug menu item appears by (or replaces) the help menu item. It's kind of cool to explore in debug mode. You can give yourself more stars, and therefore play around with new items you haven't seen yet in conventional play. I haven't done much there, but mainly because I am having fun playing the standard way for now.
It's not really a cheat, but sometimes when you are adding floors in the basement, you will strike treasure. I have twice, once for $1M and once for $4M. You will sometimes get a message that "bones were found during construction". That's a clue you're close. I'm not sure, but maybe you need to actually build something on the random spot. Once, I just made a floor and got the "bones" message. Much later, I put a restaurant or something near there and only then did I hit the treasure.
I find it difficult to make a lot of money just on rents and things, so I depend pretty heavily on advertising on the outside view of the building. A billboard costs you $100k, but you get $50k when you put an add on it. One year later (12 days in Tower Time) the add goes away and you can put another one up. So, at the end of one year, you've recovered your $100k and make $50k every year after. I try to add a few billboards each January. I now have a huge tower that has at least 80 billboards. Each January, I put adds on all 80 and collect $4M! That is getting real tedious, though, so I am hoping to become profitable and just let the billboards lapse. Then, if I need some cash, I can just go outside and place a number of adds. I think about it like money in the bank I can withdraw.
Electrical power is kind of funny too. Most items draw power. I built one of my first towers too fast and put a subway station in as soon as it was available and I could afford it. Well, this and all my elevators and all drew too much power and blew the breakers. The normal solution is to go buy more breakers in your power room. Trouble is, a power room wasn;t available a that level, so I was dead in the water. Moral of the story: Just because you have things available to build, doesn't mean you need to right away. Save the subway for the next level, when you can build a power room.
The last post I see above, sent just a few hours ago is a good question. The manual helps. I won't give a direct answer yet, as I don't want to spoil anyone's fun. But let me give you a clue: Like many things in Yoot Tower, if you need to do something, you'll eventually be told. For example, on the first level, you will eventually see a status message in your info box (where it tells you revenue just came in, or the like) that you need to do some particular thing before a VIP will visit. If you miss the message, it will show up again. It really does take a while to get from level one to two, so be patient. In addition to having a successful VIP visit, the population needs to be at a certain level. So, just enjoy the game, get good at doing stuff, get the population up (with offices and visitors, etc., and you'll find out what to do.
Anway, that's it for now. I hope I am not being too long-winded here. For now, I'm just having fun. I am sure there were never any plug-ins made beyond the original three. I think that will intrigue me some day. When I get tired of the game, I can have fun hacking it.
Happy times.
I have recently got this game.
I am having trouble going from 2 to 3 stars, what is the requirement to get 3 stars?
Aso, lot of my people are leaving because of "bad atmosphere", how do I stop this?
This seems t be the only active Yoot tower out there!
Thanks,
Read the manual if you have it. It gives the general requirements there for moving star to star. In the Tokyo setting, you need to have an electronics store, which a VIP will come to visit. You also need to have the population up at a certain level (not terribly high).
Rest assured that if you don't know what to do to move up, you eventually get little hints in the information window.
As far as bad atmosphere, I find that comment to be frustrating. It can mean anything. Just watch your places by using the EVAL button, and use the magnifying glass to check out those who are not happy. It's almost always excessive traffic (kind of frustrating as well).
Some general principals to help with that:
(1) Make sure your elevator shafts contain plenty of cars.
(2) (Not sure about this) don't mix offices, shops, and living areas on the same floor. I have come to believe that even putting a vending machine on the same floor with an office or living area causes stress. I think the game kind of dumbly assumes that you are putting a shop on the same level as a business. I thought I was being nice by putting vending machines close to where workers needed them!
I agree, there seem to be no othe active Yoot site. It's interesting how some good games fade into the past.
RYEN:
To connect a trash facility, use a service elevator. People dumping the trash (and it's only for restaurants) will not use anything else to move from floor to floor. So any level with a restaurant needs to be connected to the level with the trash facility via a service elevator.
Note that it's OK if one service elevator leads down to, say the lobby, then another from the lobby down to the trash facility. The worker will walk through the lobby to the other service elevator. My manual says that one trash facility can handle about 50 restaurants.
I ended up demolishing the restaurant.
BTW, I made it to the final level. I was pretty systematic about it, so the building looks kind of too "modular". Now I am having fun building a new one with a more free and patient approach. Lots of fun.
Happy days, all.
I have a full Tower rated building, and Probably about 20 restaurants in it. All of them are located either in the basement, or in floors 91-99. As such, I just have one huge service elevator (which also lets housekeeping service the center tower's hotel suites) that stretches from floor 99, down to floor B2, where I keep three trash facilities. One in the center of the elevator, and one to each side of the service elevator. After some experimentation, it appears if you build farther than two trash facilities away from an elevator, nobody will haul their garbage to it.
I now have 4 stars and I found that the last item has to go on level 100 but by the time I build that high, I start having issues w/power going out and I am not allowed to add another power facility. Also it seems impossible to keep tentants happy. i have elevators staggard so they only hit one main floor and then take you up the next 14 floors on to try to help w/traffic - this seems to help some.
Anyway I had to get rid of a lot of facilities to keep the brown outs from repeatedly occuring and finally just build floors up to 100 for the final item w/out building anything on those floors. My problem now is that even w/billboards i can't get enough $$$ built up to build my final item.
Any suggestions on A) keeping tenants from leaving B) how to build up enough cash to place the final item -- is 4 stars enough?
Oh, by the way, it's Hawaii I'm playing that I mention about above, thanks.
in each level theres only really 5 different things u can build regardless of what rating you have.
each new level really brings nothing new.
the whole elevator system is a joke. since when did u go to a hotel and have to swtich evelvators to get to your floor
the only legitimate way of making money is putting advertisments all over the outside of the building which every month u have to click a million times to renew
why do u have to constantly select the movie theatre to renew a movie. why does the movie theatre only play one movie at a time?
basically its a poorly programed game, with ilttle or no direction. its basically exactly the same as sim tower which itself was a piece of junk. tetris is more engaging and rewarding (and thats just sad)
TIP: If you are making a hotel tower, place a lobby every 15 floors and get a lotta cash!
Got a question a friend of mine gave me this game but didn't have the manual and I am dying to know how many stars are there? only 3 or still 5 like in Simtower? If there are 5 what are the requirements for each level? Right now im sitting at 3 with a pop of about 6000 ive had two VIPs give an "excellent" rating both were for hotels one was the old lady and the other was the king of babaganoush or wherever anyways im not sure what else i need to do/build thanks a lot love the game I think its a great change to Sim Tower 1 which is STILL fun mind you just getting old I wish maxis would make an official sim tower 2 not with new corny 3d funk-o-matic graphics but the plain simple 2d stuff just with more buildings and more options etc anywyas if anyone knows about the stars please let me know :)
http://web.archive.org/web/20021120231534/http://www.yoottower.com/
I love SimTower, I just got a copy of this off ebay. I'll have to see if I like it or not.
Does anyone else have a link to some downloadable towers? The ones from the site above don't seem to work with my version :(
-Jason
You know the mantra—supply and demand. They've got it. You want it? You pay their price. If more people had it available to sell, the price would drop.
anyone here knows where to find a copy of the manual online... thanks.
2. Power: Use the magnifying glass on the power room and add breakers.
3. Bad Atmosphere: Could be anything.
4. Sky Lobby: Once you have two towers click between them with the sky lobby. Not too far and 3 floor of clear space. (I use a floor with a large elevator stop)
In my personal oppinion the game is cooler, but also a lot more challenging than the original Simtower. Not really a bad thing, as Simtower wasn't that hard, in the end.
Just a huge amount of fun, just is this game.
The shop sales percentages are just sometimes guesswork until you get them right.
I wonder how hard it would be to create plug-ins for the game...? More billboard advertisements would be cool.
Can someone help please?
I build an elevator that stops on all floors needed, have a front desk and some rooms, and the rooms say they're unconnected. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong. Also don't know how the 'leg' tool works - I suppose it should show accessibility, but then why does it show the rooms green when clicked on the front desk, but only show the lobby green when clicked on the rooms?
(Why couldn't they include a help in the game...)
I'm hoping that new plugins will someday be available...
If only new plugin would become available... It's a shame that games like this are practically shunned these days by developers and most gamers.
can someone help me?
I'm happy to see that there's still at least a few others playing it in 2010.
Thank you so much!
It's used to zoom in and out of the map.
Click on the Telescope Button then Right-Click the screen to zoom out or Left-Click the screen to zoom in.
On a side note, I did find a really good guide here, but a manual would still be really nice:
https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/142965-yoot-tower/faqs/54898
Last comment was a while ago, but thought I'd post 2 links to the manual here for anyone else reading this great 'forum' lol:
http://www.carbon-izer.com/yoot/yoot.html
http://www.carbon-izer.com/yoot/manual.zip
Also a FAQ:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/142965-yoot-tower/faqs/54898
Great site, lots of goodies. Also fun game! I'm a big Sim fan, have ALL the SimCities SimFarm SimTower etc, all my favorities played them for hours.
I've got the manual on my HDD so if the links stop working and anyone still needs a copy just email me.
Cheers!~ Bellarmine
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